Mid-State Auditions

Every year middle tennessee has its competition to pick the best band students in junior high school (grades 7-9 ) and high school (grades 10-12). (Although some school districts like ours have the 9th graders in high school and some have them in junior high, for fairness, all 9th graders get to compete in the junior high category.) For the auditions, students come early in the morning to pick up their audition number on a first come, first serve basis. Then they wait for many hours for their number to be called. The judges sit behind a screen so they can't see the student who is playing and they simply are given a number ID for their scoring.The students are given a piece of music several weeks in advance they must prepare ahead of time. Then during the audition, they must play this piece, two scales that are selected randomly by the judges, the chromatic scale, and then from one to three pieces of sight reading music that they are given only 20 seconds before playing. The exact number of pieces played depends on the judges agreeing among themselves that the student is skilled enough to merit going to the next more advanced piece. So you get some sense that you are doing well if the judges allow you to play the third sight reading piece.

The very top players make the gold band (24 in clarinet). The next set make silver band, and then for grades 7&8, there is an additional level called honor band as the gold and silver bands are made up primarily of 9th graders. Faithful readers know that in his very first year of playing the clarinet, our son made the 7&8th grade honor band, which really surprised us. Then last year, he was one of the few 8th graders to make the gold band. In this year's competition he did really, really well. Since I'm paranoid about how random people from around the world have been able to crawl to our blog despite our blog settings, I won't tell you his exact position, but he placed highly.

We are very proud of him, and wonder where he got his musical talent from.

Thanksgiving

The most impressive thing about this Thanksgiving was that I was able to go thru the Turkey Bowl without injuring myself. Sure, I was out of breath the whole time, but less than I would have expected given the fact I couldn't even get out of bed Monday.

R & R made it down by about noon and then we went over to some friends house for dinner. We had a lovely dinner with so many friends that it almost resembled the original Thanksgiving feast.



I was given the responsibility to carve the two turkeys and believe I did a lovely job now that I have been trained in the proper methodology.

6 of one Half a dozen of the other

ME celebrated a birthday with some friends and family.

The party included games like Simon Says, Charades for Kids, the balloon popping game, musical chairs, goodie bag decorating, cupcake decorating, making christmas ornaments, and opening presents. Wow, what a lot to things to do in an hour and a half.

Winter Olympics Wii Style

With my sister (RDS) and hubby (RSS) in town for Thanksgiving, and the beginning of TV advertising for the Vancouver Olympics, we hatched a plan for a Wii Olympics. It was originally going to include both a Winter and Summer games, but due to time constraints, we settled on simply the Winter Games. We each represented a country. AMD-The Phillipines; RDS-Australia; RSS-The Republic of California; JPD-Sweden JAD-Japan; ME-Mexico; SD-The Khmer Republic.

Here are the results:

Snowboarding:
Gold: JPD
Silver: RDS
Bronze: SD

Ski Jump:
Gold: JAD
Silver: SD
Bronze: RDS

Ski Slalom:
Gold: JPD
Silver: RDS
Bronze: SD

Penquin Slider:
Gold:RSS
Silver: SSD
Bronze: JPD

Snowball Fight:
Gold:JPD
Silver:RSS
Bronze: SSD

San Francisco

San Francisco and the Bay area is one of my favorite cities to visit. Its setting on the bay, the architecture, the wonderful cityscaping, numerous culinary opportunities, the moderate temperature, and it absolute sense of place make it remarkable in a nation becoming more and more simply a series of cookie cutter cities with standardized freeway fungus shopping and such.



But this visit was more memorable mostly for the wrong reasons. I have been struggling with a cold/flu for the past month. So the flight in was rather painful. Fortunately, I had a short lay-over at LAX, and my brother was generous enough to drive over to LAX late at night and visit for a few minutes. But I spend a good portion of the meeting feeling like my ears were full of water.

Trying to be gluten-free in San Francisco is no fun at all. No wonderful sourdough sandwiches. Most Chinese and Japanese is out because noodles are made with wheat and the soy sauce is wheat based. Everything else you have to ask about. Did have a wonderful pumpkin curry dish at a great Thai restaurant.

Worst of all, my cold/flu left me with no energy. I could barely make it through a two hour session of talks before going up to my hotel room and crashing for 15-20 minutes to have enough energy to make it through the next one. So much for my plans to get up early in the morning and going running or biking along the Bay to the Golden Gate. I did manage to walk over to Coit Tower and go up for a lowly view of all those places I wasn't going to get to, and the houses on the way up Telegraph Hill had lovely landscaping and awesome views.


As a final insult to injury, not many people came to my poster presentation. After the enthusiam from the people at my presentation on the same stuff in Mexico, I am thinking that I may not attend this meeting any more, since it just doesn't seem like there is the interest in my field from this group of scientist anymore.


The hotel was the center of some of San Francisco's holiday celebrations, with a Disney on Ice show just outside the hotel and the lighting of a Christmas tree insight. So at least this was a nice start to the Christmas season.
So I will have to go back to San Francisco another time and have a better experience.

Flowers and Fauna

We enjoyed the beautiful flora and fauna of Mexico.

Hotel & Ocean

My sister thinks that I spend a lot of time on vacation. Actually I spend a lot of late nights in the lab and every once in a while I get out for good behavior and get to present my stuff to others.

The other day I got to present my stuff to a bunch of other scientist in a sweet setting...Cancun, Mexico. AM came along for the ride.

View from our hotel room.

View on the other side of the road.

Hotel courtyard.



Have you ever seen such beautiful blue water? (Okay, yes in Hawaii, but it was still sweet.)

AM walking on the beach.




SD pondering why he only gets to play in the waves in the evening when the science is done.




At a market.




A Mayan village.